Post # 32

Thursday, November 15, 2018
Quote for the day: "Trying to describe a fresh-caught brook trout is about as easy as trying to describe a sunset." John Voelker. Michigan Living, April 1990.


Reviews


The Damage Done
by PJ Parrish


PJ Parrish is the pen name of two sisters. One lives year-round in Traverse City and the other splits her time between Traverse City and Florida. This is their 12th book in the Louis Kincaid/Joe Frye series. The sisters' previous Kincaid mysteries made the New York Times bestseller list and received eleven awards for mystery writing. The awards include two Shamus' that recognize outstanding achievement in private eye fiction and an Anthony, one of the most prestigious awards in the world of mystery writing given annually at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. They have also been nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of  America.  These sisters are heavyweights in the mystery writing field and need no recommendation from anyone, let alone an obscure blogger who reviews books about Michigan. Go out and get the book if you like superior, deeply involving mysteries.

But allow me to add my two cents to all the other rave reviews. I would argue this fine novel is too nuanced, character-driven, and intricately plotted to classify it as a "thriller" as the cover claims. For me, a thriller is akin to a roller coaster ride that speeds around the track and leaves the rider breathless. But The Damage Done is much more than just a mystery, it is a novel about the scars left by the terrible burden of guilt, putting faith before family, child abuse,  and abandonment. The book isn't a roller coast ride but an emotional juggernaut that steadily builds up steam until the final 100 pages when the reader feels like they've stepped on the tracks and into the path of a speeding freight train. 

Louis Kincaid served as a Michigan State trooper until he was made a scapegoat by his superior Max Steele and fired. Kincaid found work as a private eye in Florida.  Then out of the blue came an invitation to join an elite unit of the Michigan State Police created to investigate cold cases. Heading up the unit is Max Steele. Each officer in the five-member unit must choose one of five cold cases Steele has posted on a board. It soon dawns on Kincaid that all five members of the unit, himself included, have deep emotional wounds and Steele picked cases he knew would dig at the scar tissue until they reopened the wounds and haunted his officers. 

When a prominent Grand Rapids TV evangelist is murdered in his church, Steele talks his superiors into letting his unit handle the new and highly visible case. The result is a complex, involving, and ultimately a compulsively readable novel full of surprising plot twists, memorable characters, and a deeply felt examination of the human condition. And long before I reached the last page of this book I added eleven earlier books by Parish to my must-read list.

The Damage Done by PJ Parish. Our Noir Publishing, 2018, $14.99.



Fatal Crossing: The Mysterious Disappearance of NWA Flint 2501 and the Quest for Answers
by V.O. Van Heest

Lake Michigan like all the Great Lakes hides many secrets and only reluctantly gives them up. Most involve long lost ships and missing crewmen that vanished without a trace. But one of Lake Michigan's most enduring mysteries is Northwest Flight 2501 that was flying from New York to Minnesota on June 23, 1950. The DC-4 with 58 passengers and crew left the Michigan coast, entered a squall line, and disappeared. Pieces of wreckage mixed with human body parts were found by searchers the next day but the plane was never found and the mystery remains as to what brought the DC-4 down. At the time it was the country's worst airline disaster.

The author is a member of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association and early in this century, the group decided to search for the missing plane and see if they could find answers as to why it went down. At a meeting in Chicago, she met the author and explorer Clive Cussler who headed up the National Underwater Marine Agency and told him of her group's work to locate Flight 2501. He pledged to assist in the search and for the next decade sent a crew from his organization who arrived every summer with the most up-to-date underwater search equipment.

Fatal Crossing is the author's meticulous and fascinating account of the search for the lost plane. The decade-long search for the plane turned up several new shipwrecks but no plane. While the underwater search was underway the author talked to meteorologists, reread weather reports produced at the time of the flight, studied other DC-4 crashes, flight plans, researched the flight experience of the pilot and co-pilot, spoke to former DC-4 pilots, and contacted relatives of the passengers who died on the flight. 

Based on extensive research into the crew and passengers, and based on the aeronautics of 1950 and the peculiarities of the DC-4 (it is prone to flip on its back in violent weather) the author takes the reader on board Flight 2501 and in great detail describes the aircraft and its passengers last flight down to the last traumatic minutes. Van Heest's compassionate and gripping book is most likely the closest we will ever get to what happened to Flight 2501. It is also an important contribution to the lore and history of Lake Michigan.

Fatal Crossing: The Mysterious Disappearance of NWA Flight 2501 and the Quest for Answers by V. O. van Heest. In-Depth Edith, 2013, $19.95.



They  Drank to That: The Bars, Beer, and the Beat of Hamtramck
by Greg Kowalski

This is a brief but intoxicating history of the bar culture in a city that held the record for more bars per capita than any other city in America. I've always found Hamtramck a fascinating town that in the 20s was a veritable petri dish for fostering bank robbers and career criminals in addition to being a town packed with hard-working Germans and Poles who flocked to the town looking for employment in the giant Dodge Brothers auto plant and nearby Ford plants. 

The 2.1-square mile town is completely surrounded by Detroit and after reading this book I will always think of Hamtramck as the shot glass full of whiskey that's gently dropped into a large mug of beer to make a Boilermaker depth charge. During its heyday, it is estimated there were bars on practically every street corner and the 45,000 men who worked in Hamtramck's Dodge Main stopped to have a shot and a beer on the way to work and on the way home did the same. On blistering hot summer days, the Dodge  Brothers brought kegs of beer into the plant so their workers didn't skip out for one. In the Twenties, the city lost track of its liquor licenses and it was estimated that there were 200 to 400 bars in the town. And yes it was during Prohibition, but it was openly ignored because the city found it broke their budget to even try and enforce it.

The book offers a profusely illustrated, succinct history of the city and how over the decades Hamtramck's bars changed with the times but always remained social gathering places, entertainment venues, served as gambling houses, or also operated as bordellos, and one even gained national recognition as a high-class nightclub.  The author does a fine job of showing how the bars were a part of the very social fabric of the city. Hundreds of bars and taverns are mentioned by name and readers will find short histories of some of the better known or more infamous drinkings spot in town. An appendix offers "a by no means comprehensive list of Hamtramck bars going back to the 1960s." This book is likely to appeal to a wider audience than those living in Hamtramck or even greater Detroit. I raise a glass to the author for giving us a unique sidelight on Michigan history - the interesting kind that never finds its way into Michigan history textbooks - Prost.

They Drank for That: Bars, The Beer, and the Beat of Hamtramck by Greg Kowalski. Arcadia Publishing, 2017, $22.99 pb.

Any of the books reviewed in this blog may be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.


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Post # 31

Thursday, November 1, 2018
Quote of the day: "...Detroit made one promise to its young people -- a good job. A place on the line at GM, Ford or Chrysler was a part of our birthright, a legacy to the city's children. And then early in the seventies that legacy was withdrawn." Ze'ev Chafets. Devils Night and Other True Tales of Detroit, 1990.

Reviews


Tiger Stadium: Essays and Memories of Detroit's Historic Ballpark, 1912-2009
Edited by Michael Betzold, John Davids. Bill Dow, Johan Pastier and Frank Rashid


Tiger fans who remember Tiger Stadium with great affection will love this book. Newer fans who never saw a game in the old stadium and even lukewarm local baseball fans who watched the occasional game on TV played at Tiger Stadium will come to understand why the grounds on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull has been recognized as "one of the premier proletarian baseball stadiums in the land."

The book offers a thorough history of the ballfield that was built for $10,000 in 1894-95 and beginning in 1895, and for the next 104 summers, was the home of Detroit's major league baseball team. It was also the home of the Detroit Lions for over 30 years. It underwent constant enlargement, remodeling, modernization, and several name changes in its long life. For the hundreds of thousands of Michiganders who were as devoted to baseball and the Tigers as to any religion, Tiger Stadium became a cathedral in which they came to worship the game. Less devout fans will still find the book immensely interesting as several fine narrative essays detail the history of the ballclub, its architectural significance as a classic ballpark, and how changes in ownership were a catalyst for change in the ballpark. The essays are bolstered by charts, statistics, detailed drawings, and dozens of great photographs. 

One of the great insights of the book is how Tiger Stadium had a unifying effect on a metropolitan area that starting in the 1950s was growing ever further apart. White flight, the widening gap between the rich and the lower economic class, and other economic and social barriers further separated the people of metro Detroit. Yet as one of the essays makes clear the stadium, "continued to bring us together and became by default one of the area's last remaining places of common ground." Old Tiger Stadium with its shoulder-to-shoulder seating, crowded concession stands, and narrow concourses forced Tiger fans rich and poor, Black and White to literally rub shoulders with each other. Whereas new stadiums with exclusive seats, luxury boxes, and club sections, do just the opposite. They separate classes. 

The book doesn't miss a single significant moment in the park's history including a home run Babe Ruth hit on June 8th, 1926 that cleared the centerfield wall and landed in the intersection of Trumbull and Cherry Street. The ball traveled 575 feet in the air and is considered the longest home run in baseball history. The book also covers how African Americans were treated less than friendly even after the on-field color line was broken in 1947 and Blacks came in greater numbers to see African American ballplayers. Black fans faced near constant mistreatment, racial slurs, and poor treatment by ushers and concessionaires. The Tigers didn't break the color line on the field until 1958. 

One of the best chapters in the book features players, ushers, concession workers, and fans from every walk of life recalling their favorite or memorable moments in Tiger Stadium. The book's editors detail the history of efforts to move the Tigers to a new stadium as early as 1948. In spite of intense efforts to save it the stadium was torn down in 2008  but fans still come to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull to walk the old baselines, play catch, play in pick up games, or just remember. 

This fine book is the equal of a no-hitter in the seventh game of the world series. It is memorable, full of fascinating details, and darn near perfect.
Tiger Stadium: Essays and Memories of Detroit's Historic Ballpark, 1912-2009 edited by Michael Betzold, John Davids, Bill dow, John Pastier, and Frank Rashid. McFarland and Company, 2018, $39.95 pb.



A Pattern for Murder
by Ann Yost


The Keweenaw Peninsula is remote, strikingly beautiful, sparsely populated, rich in history, and home to its own unique brand of Yooper culture and language that is heavily influenced by a predominantly Finnish population. It's not quite like anyplace else in America and makes for a great background against which to set a mystery novel. 

Hattie Lehtinen (there are more Finnish family names in this mystery than the Helsinki telephone book) has returned to the town of Red Jacket at the end of a disastrous six-month marriage to manage her father's bait shop which she plans on turning into a bait shop and yarn emporium. Deeply civic-minded, Hattie helps in planning and orchestrating the celebration of turning a large, two-family lightkeeper's house into a county old age home. The only incident marring the occasion is the murder of the woman's son who gave the lighthouse to the county. He apparently had returned to the Keweenaw to contest the ownership of the house and took a fatal and involuntary swan dive from the top of the light tower for his troubles. 

The incompetent, do nothing sheriff assigned his nineteen-year-old deputy Ellwood to investigate the murder. The kid is so inexperienced he Googles a website entitled "Ten Steps to Solving a Murder." Hattie has read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries and therefore considers herself more than qualified to solve a murder and appoints herself Ellwood's assistant investigator. And to quote a famous fictional detective, "The game is afoot."

The unraveling of the crime and search for the killer leads to two more murders before Hattie pins the tail on the guilty party. I must admit Agatha Christie novels were never my cup of tea and it wasn't the hunt for the truth and solving of the mystery within these pages that kept me reading. Topographically, historically, geologically, and culturally the Keweenaw is an endlessly fascinating place and the author has done a great job of capturing the uniqueness of the peninsula and the character of its inhabitants. It also doesn't hurt that the author has a well developed sly sense of humor and uses it to full effect in this first in a series of mysteries starring the proprietress of Red Jacket's only bait shop and yarn emporium.

As an aside I must comment on the term "Cozy Mystery." This is the third such self-described mystery in this sub-genre I've reviewed and frankly, I'd like a publisher to define a cozy mystery because I'm at a loss to do so. Their hallmark characteristics seem to be the avoidance of describing any gruesome aspect of the act of murder, little or no swearing, and the sex act, or any approximation of the aforesaid activity, cannot appear between the book's covers. This in spite of the fact the latter could be depicted as cozy and comforting and this book includes the term "Holy Wha" which is described as a Yooper expletive. The American Heritage Dictionary defines cozy as "snug and comfortable" which seems the polar opposite of a murder mystery. It almost feels as if publishers of cozy mysteries are trying to sanitize murder. I would welcome their response.

A Pattern for Murder: The Bait and Stitch Mystery Series, Book One by Ann Yost. ePublishing Works, 2018, $16.99 pb.



Boats Made in Holland: A Michigan Tradition
Geoffrey D. Reynolds

This slim but fact-filled book contains concise, thumbnail histories of the many boat-building companies in the Holland area over the last 120 years. The twenty-four companies briefly profiled are arranged by the era in which they were established and run in length from two to five pages and include numerous photographs.  

Each entry notes the specific kind of pleasure boat the company designed and produced, and highlights any advances in architectural design, construction methods, and material introduced by the company. The first use of a copper alloy steel, which is non-corrosive, for cabin cruiser hulls or the introduction of fiberglass in boat building is noted and described.

I can't help but believe this short book of 120 some pages, not including notes, bibliography, and the index is aimed at a very narrow audience. But for those who are interested in the history of pleasure boat construction and the companies in the Holland area who made pleasure boats their business, then this is the book for you.  It is also another small but appreciated addition to Michigan history.
Boats Made in Holland: A Michigan Tradition by Geoffrey D. Reynolds. History Press, 2018, $21.99 pb.

Any of the books reviewed in this blog may be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.







   








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